


Overwhelmed

by c0smic_cl0uds



Series: BAD END [1]
Category: Naruto, RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gaara-centric, Gen, Plot Bunny, Raven's barely in this tbh sorry to disappoint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-07-13 06:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16012589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c0smic_cl0uds/pseuds/c0smic_cl0uds
Summary: His eyes close, and he hears footsteps approaching, booted feet pausing on the soft, bloodstained earth right next to where he lays. Words float through his head, and he vaguely registers that it's the person standing above him, speaking in a voice that's flat and cold. “Leave him. He'll bleed out soon enough.”His ears are ringing again.





	1. Chapter 1

They come from between the trees, quick as shadow and as lethal as the finest ninjas the Hidden Sand has to offer. The strike is so quick and sudden that Gaara’s sand almost isn’t enough, the blow of a sword stopped by the shifting grains just inches from his throat. He jerks his hands, already prepared to kill, but Raven gets to him first, plunging her sword through skin and flesh and bone in one swift, practiced movement. The first assailant is dead instantly, the blade piercing directly through his heart, but there are many more to take his place. They emerge from the branches, from the underbrush, from the shadows cast by bushes and tree trunks and the canopy of leaves overhead.

And then comes the fighting, the clearing becoming a whirl of sand and blood and blades that dance faster than the eye can see, of lightning and ice and tendrils of shadow that weave and stab and cut. Everything is a blur, a crimson blur, clouded by the red haze that falls over his vision when he's absorbed in a fight, when nothing else matters except for the battle that rages around him. He twists and turns and flicks his hands, always looking for the next target, but there are just so many of them that if his concentration lapses for even a second they’ll leave a cut on his arm or a bruise on his side, inhuman agility getting them just close enough to land a small blow or two before his sand bats them away.

A few minutes in and he’s panting for breath, bleeding from gashes he has to force himself not to look at. The real problem isn't the wounds, though - it's the fact that his chakra reserves have been draining continuously throughout the fight, and now that he’s finally in a good position for a large scale technique, he no longer has the energy.  _This isn’t good_ , he thinks, eyes darting around the clearing. There are more bodies strewn across the forest floor than he can count, but there are plenty still standing. Listening to Raven’s heavy breathing beside him, he can tell, with a sickening wave of fear, just how right he is. 

_Not good at all._

The fighting continues as they weaken all the while, their enemies battering them harder than ever as the vicious fight moves toward a close. All manner of cuts and bruises spring up all over their bodies, until Gaara, his sand, and his clothes are sticky and slick with blood and Raven’s skin is more red than white, her aura having flickered out and died a good while ago. He wants to believe they can still pull through, that they’ll make it out of this encounter alive. He has to. He can’t just leave his siblings, his friends, his village behind. Can he?

_I can't._

Then comes the twang of a bowstring, punctuated by a winded “Oomph!” from Raven and a spatter of blood against the side of Gaara’s face. A marksman in the trees. Reinforcements, perhaps? At this point, it doesn’t really matter.

A minute turn of his head reveals an arrow protruding from between the ribs on Raven’s right side. Her wide eyes stare at it in hazy confusion before two more come to join the first, one lodging itself in her shoulder and another just above her hip. She staggers on the spot and lets out a cough, blood spilling from her mouth. Her eyes flick to Gaara, hands slipping in the blood that coats the hilt of her sword. She opens her mouth and shouts something, probably telling him to get out of there, to run and just keep running, but he can’t hear her. His ears are ringing.

Then there’s a flash of black in front of him and it’s fast, much too fast. His sand can’t stop the enemy from moving in front of him. Nor can it stop the blinding pain as something drives through his chest with a sickening wet crunch. His vision goes white, and a scream tears from his mouth - a yell that might have started as a cry of “Raven!” but which quickly twists into something unrecognizable. He’s not sure how he’s still conscious when he hits the ground, pinned to the dirt by what might be a spear but he doesn’t know because he really, _really_ doesn’t want to look, but he is. So when two more arrows let fly and a body falls against a tree, he hears it, despite the ringing. And he doesn’t want to look, he really doesn’t want to see the arrows and the gashes and the blood, _so much blood -_ he just wants to go to sleep and pretend that none of this ever happened, pretend that he’s back home in Suna with Temari and Kankuro, preparing for a trip to Konoha to visit their friends and have ramen at Ichiraku with Naruto and just be happy, if only for a little while.

But he looks anyway, and he sees red eyes staring back at him. They’re full of pain, but it’s a different kind than he was expecting, a deep ache that goes far beyond what's physical. The kind he knows well, too well. His fingers clench reflexively, his arm jerking feebly towards his chest, where his heart thumps and stutters and _aches._

And then those eyes are closing, and the body goes limp. And just as quickly as she was there, Raven is gone.

His ears stop ringing.

His eyes close, and he hears footsteps approaching, leather boots pausing on the soft, bloodstained earth right next to where he lays. Words float through his head, and he vaguely registers that it's the person standing above him, speaking in a voice that's flat and cold. 

“Leave him. He'll bleed out soon enough.”

The footsteps, accompanied by a couple of other pairs, retreat into the distance, and eventually they disappear. It’s only after a heavy silence has settled like a suffocating blanket over the clearing that Gaara allows himself to slip into unconsciousness, the cries of his siblings echoing in his head. He watches them fall again, down into an unknown emptiness. Fear squeezes his heart like a vice. _Save them._

His hand stretches out, but it's too late.

They're gone. 

It's dark, cold. Lonely. 

 

His ears are ringing again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awake.

He’s not sure when he wakes up, but when he does it’s only the echo of the ringing in his ears that reminds him he’s still alive, that this is reality now.

The first thing that hits him in the pain. A deep, throbbing ache right in the center of his chest, and it hurts so bad that he has to clench his teeth to keep from screaming again because he knows the effort required to make that kind of sound would only make it worse. Trying to ignore the pain, he lets his eyes flick down towards his chest to assess his wounds - his stomach lurches. A spear, its head piercing through his chest and into the earth below him, pins him to the ground, the weapon lodged firmly in his solar plexus with half of the now-broken shaft still sticking up into the air. He quickly looks away, sucking in a breath, which makes the wound throb again, and groans through gritted teeth, his stomach rolling unpleasantly. He concentrates on breathing, as deep as he can without sending stabs of pain through his abdomen, because he knows if he vomits in this position he’ll probably choke to death.

_Pull yourself together. You’re a ninja. Assess the situation and figure out a plan of action._

Closing his eyes, he slowly begins noting the state of his body, concentrating on each vital segment one at a time and assessing its condition. Miraculously, his heart seems to be undamaged, still thumping away in a stuttering rhythm deep inside his chest cavity. His lungs, he’s not so sure about - gurgling accompanies every breath, and the coppery taste of blood is thick in his throat. A quick check reveals that all of his limbs are still intact, and the sticky blood in his hair is, as far as he can tell, the result of no more than a scalp wound. Overall, he doesn’t seem too seriously injured - apart from the gaping wound in his chest, of course. Any normal human would have succumbed to this kind of injury by now - he supposes it’s only because of Shukaku’s chakra that he’s still alive at this point.   
  
Armed with a slightly less vague idea of his current circumstances, he tries to decide with cloudy thoughts what he should do next. His first thought is to try to pull the blade out of the ground - to remove it entirely from his chest would be to remove the only thing preventing him from bleeding to death. However, this quickly proves to be impossible. Just placing his hands on the spear is enough to send pain shooting through his ribs and up his spine, causing him to yelp and immediately drop his hands to his sides again. Still, he tries again, straining to move his sand underneath him to cut away the spear from the earth. But all of the Shukaku’s chakra is being devoted to keeping his heart beating, and he barely has any chakra of his own left - moving the sand just a few inches is enough to set the clearing spinning about him, black spots swimming in alarming number across his vision. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes, and he looks around wildly, searching for someone, anyone to help.

His eyes find only bodies. Bodies including a red-and-black clad woman with a broken sword and a white mask tied at her waist, slumped against the trunk of a large oak tree.

The tears flow freely. Each sob sends a stab of pain through him, but he’s past the point of caring. He wants to go home. He wants to see his siblings, his friends, Naruto. He wants Raven to be alive, he wants none of this to ever have happened. He…

He doesn’t want to die.

Please.

_Please don’t let me die._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gaara: oh look. i've been impaled.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a snippet of a plot bunny I've had lying around for a while now. We'll see if I decide to go anywhere with this.


End file.
